Nearly half of Americans subscribe to a medical conspiracy theory
By Melissa Healy, LA Times
4:54 PM PDT, March 19, 2014
Is there really a link between vaccine and autism, cellphones and cancer, the HIV virus and the CIA? Almost half of Americans believe the answer is yes for at least one of the many medical conspiracy theories that have circulated in recent years. And the attitudes and behavior of those conspiracists toward standard medical advice reflect that mistrust, says a study out this week.
A pair of University of Chicago social scientists set out to determine the extent of "medical conspiracism" among the U.S. public and conducted a nationally representative online survey. They gauged knowledge of and beliefs about six widely discussed medical conspiracy theories and explored how belief in those theories influenced individuals' behavior when it came to matters of health.
Their results appeared as a letter published online this week in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
Fully 37% of those surveyed endorsed the belief that the Food and Drug Administration, under pressure from pharmaceutical companies, is suppressing natural cures for cancer and other diseases, and 31% said they "neither agree nor disagree" with that idea, the researchers found.
(More here.)
4:54 PM PDT, March 19, 2014
Is there really a link between vaccine and autism, cellphones and cancer, the HIV virus and the CIA? Almost half of Americans believe the answer is yes for at least one of the many medical conspiracy theories that have circulated in recent years. And the attitudes and behavior of those conspiracists toward standard medical advice reflect that mistrust, says a study out this week.
A pair of University of Chicago social scientists set out to determine the extent of "medical conspiracism" among the U.S. public and conducted a nationally representative online survey. They gauged knowledge of and beliefs about six widely discussed medical conspiracy theories and explored how belief in those theories influenced individuals' behavior when it came to matters of health.
Their results appeared as a letter published online this week in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
Fully 37% of those surveyed endorsed the belief that the Food and Drug Administration, under pressure from pharmaceutical companies, is suppressing natural cures for cancer and other diseases, and 31% said they "neither agree nor disagree" with that idea, the researchers found.
(More here.)
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